PLEIW in Matt 26:53

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri May 21 06:56:00 EDT 1999


At 8:46 PM -0400 5/20/99, Jean-Francois Racine wrote:
>In Matt 26:53, one finds the clause PLEIW [H] DWDEKA LEGIWNAS AGGELWN.
>
>1. Is PLEIW a comparative here?  If it is the case, what is the point of
>comparison?
>
>2. What is the grammatical explanation of the presence of [H] in several
>MSS such as C E W Delta Pi Omega fam1 fam13 33 565?
>
>3. Blass/Debrunner/Funk par. 185 speaks of genitive of comparison, but
>still, I have difficulty to see what is the point of comparison.
>
>Could someone shed some light on this point?
>
>Jean-Francois Racine

(1) Yes: PLEIW is indeed comparative--neuter plural accusative, I think
(contracted from PLEIOSA after loss of intervocalic sigma, -IOS- being the
alternative comparative infix equivalent to what we are taught--wrongly--is
the more common comparative infix -ION-, which would have yielded the form
PLEIONA for neuter plural nom./acc. One of my peeves about the standard
teaching of Greek grammar is that these alternative forms of comparatives
in -IOS- are alluded to in footnotes in the grammars as poor relations,
when in fact the -IOS- forms are really more common in Attic and Ionic than
the -ION- forms--and Koine, it should be remembered, is essentially Ionic
dialect with a somewhat lax Attic grammar.

(2/3) The phrase has to mean, does it not, "more THAN twelve legions of
angels"? Then "twelve legions of angels" is the element of comparison; the
standard grammatical construction for comparison is to put H (originally
and literally "or", but used as a disjunctive conjunction in comparison
also) if both items in the comparison are in the same case, or to put the
second item of comparison into an ablatival genitive "of comparison."

There remains a question here about why the comparison doesn't need the H;
here's what Smyth (1920) at the Perseus site says:

1074. In statements of number and measure ê may be omitted after the
adverbial comparatives pleon (plein) more, ela_tton (meion) less, which do
not alter their case and number: pempei ouk ela_tton deka pherontas pur he
sends not less than ten men carrying fire Xen. Hell. 4.5.4, polis pleon
pentakischi_liôn andrôn a city of more than 5000 men 5. 3. 16. Even when ê
is kept, pleon (plein), etc., remains unchanged: en plein ( = pleiosin) ê
dia_kosiois etesin in more than 200 years Dem. 24.141, toxota_s plein ê
eikosi mu_riadas more bowmen than 20 myriads Xen. Cyrop. 2.1.6.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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